Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Choosing a Special Place as Your Second Residence

When you’ve worked and saved, you've likely reached the point where you want to have a second residence. It's a wonderful thing to be able to split your time between two locales to take advantage of favorable weather in each place. Fortunately, there are a lot of great places to choose from to enjoy the comforts of life, and the hardest decision is just choosing where you want to live.

Location is an obvious factor, but once you’ve thought about a place that’s always appealed to you, it’s easy to narrow down the search area. Metropolitan and cosmopolitan, or rural and secluded – these sorts of questions are easy once you’ve matured. There’s always a special place that everyone remembers fondly, and has wanted to live there or at least nearby. Beyond location, the questions are a little more general. Should you buy a house or a condo, or maybe a timeshare? Would it be better to rent an apartment, even though it essentially wastes money in the process of not helping you to create equity? Often, the simplest solution is to look into a condo, which typically has a homeowner’s association behind it that will take care of such routine tasks as lawn care and snow removal. As an owner, you’re responsible for these things anyway, so it’s very convenient to have someone else handling the basic maintenance tasks while you’re out of town, living in your original space.